Chat queries can be entered when the config is invalid, and result in generic errors

[allanday]

Before submitting your bug report

• I believe this is a bug. I'll try to join the Continue Discord for questions
• I'm not able to find an open issue that reports the same bug
• I've seen the troubleshooting guide on the Continue Docs

Relevant environment info

- OS: Linux (Fedora 41)
- Continue version: 0.8.66
- IDE version: 1.96.1
- Model: N/A

Description

After I first installed Continue, the chat prompt could be used. Entering a query resulted in the following error message being shown:

The generic error is potentially confusing. It's also confusing that you can enter a query in the first place - it looks like Continue can be used, when in in fact it can't.

Usually, it's better to prevent an error from happening, if possible. Continue appears to know that the the config isn't valid - when I open the model dropdown it lists a single item: “Claude 3.5 Sonnet (Missing API Key)”. If it could disable the chat prompt in this situation, and show a message explaining the situation, that would avoid users from hitting errors.

To reproduce

1. Install Continue
2. Without doing any setup, enter a query into the chat

Log output

No response